THE Tembari Children's Care (TCC) Inc is a day care facility at ATS Oro Settlement, 7-Mile, outside of Port Moresby, PNG. To date, it takes care of more than 200 former street children - orphans, abandoned and the unfortunate - by serving them meals twice a day, and providing them early education. Assistance - food and money - is sent by supporters who find merit in the services we provide to these children. At The Center, they are family. For all of these, we need support that is sustainable.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Tembari children watch a children’s program on Saturday. The showing of such program has been part of Tembari’s effort to educate its beneficiary children and expose them to new experience by knowing about children in foreign countries.

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By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ

A Friend of Tembari Children

SINCE the coming of electricity to the center last May, our children have enjoyed the benefits of DVD educational programs.

One executive at RH Group had donated a set of flat screen TV and a DVD player.

The children’s educational programming DVDs that we play in the afternoon were a donation from generous individuals that included my daughter-in-law Andrea, who is based in Vallejo, California.

She also sent several workbooks which could keep our preschoolers busy everyday even after their morning classes.

Andrea is well-familiar with Tembari children. She and my two grandkids – Liano and Nailani – are readying a box-full of goodies the Tembari kids could use.Some educational and recreational DVDs were also received from donors through the efforts of Rishabh Bhandari, TCC’s Founder and Co-President, while he was in the USA. Rishabh has also launched a website of the Center which is starting to draw more wider attention.

Rishabh, having recently graduated from Phillips Academy Andover in the USA, returned to PNG and is now devoting his entire time for the cause of TCC. He is taking one year off his studies, so that he can do more for the advancement of TCC’s children, mainly in the educational sphere; and also to attract more wider audience of donors through the website etc. He is now teaching children at the Center and has also launched innovative programs like “83 to 83” to make some sort of parental care or communication available for the TCC children.

Penny, TCC’s Co-Founder and Co-President, said, she is glad to see Rishabh will be spending time at the Center for one year. While Rishabh has always been working with her and Hayward from his school, and his contribution have been essential, it is going to be even more effective when he is going to be here.

After the classes, Rishabh is also co-ordinating DVD viewing to ensure education as well as entertainment for the TCC children.Says Rishabh, the Founder and Co-President of Tembari : “The kids (preschoolers) are really excited to watch every time the ABC and counting programs … this keep them busy in the afternoon … and they are getting exposed for the first time to things that they haven’t seen in the village …”

Rishabh said he has discouraged the showing of movies everyday and instead programmed the whole afternoon with the showing of educational shows. Kiddy movies are only played on Saturday.

Watching TV is big thing for the Tembari kids, especially tomost of them who are just seeing TV for the first time in their lives.

When I saw them on Saturday during my brief visit to the center while they watched a children’s programming, I just could imagine how lucky they have become these days.

But things would not really be possible without the great concern of our supporters and benefactors who wanted to contribute to the daily upbringing of our beneficiary children.

They wanted to put a stake in the future of these kids.

If you have DVD children’s programming that your own kids had decided to discard, please don’t hesitate to donate it to Tembari.

Watched, one such ABC programming could help strengthen the reading and writing facility of our kids.

It would also expose and educate them to new things taking place outside their world – here at the ATS Oro Settlement.

With the number of our beneficiary children exploding from 78 at the start of 2010 -- when I first met them -- to 215 these days, sourcing our foodstuff has since been my biggest worry.

But I have always believed that God will provide.

For more than a year now, food flow at the center has remained constant. This has been made possible by two regular donors who have been chipping in an average of 30 bags (10kg) or rice every month.

We are also getting a monthly supply of 10 cartons of tinned fish from RD Tuna Foundation. Each carton contained six 1.8kg of white tuna meat chunks which RD Tuna Canners exports to institutional users in Australia like hospitals, restaurants, fast-food, care-giver facilities and the like.

We are also receiving a monthly supply of 10 cartons of flavored milk from SVS supermart and another 8 cartons of 1-liter fresh milk from an anonymous donor.

A corporate supporter, the Pacific Industries, also supplies us with 4 cartons of 2-liter cordial every month. Plus foodstuff from other manufacturers like Hugo Canning Co which delivers tinned meat and other stuff once in a while.

With all this, Tembari’s food outlook has never been better.

But then our population boomed, and we are now feeding more than 200 mouths a day – in fact, twice a day – noon snacks and early dinner.

And right now, we are consuming 15kg (1.5 bags) of rice every day from Monday to Saturday for a total of 9 bags. On a monthly basis, we consume 36 bags, or 360kg or rice.

With only 30 bags of regular rice donation a month, we therefore run short of 6 bags every month.

But with help from a British expat who has been actively helping Tembari find new ways to boost its food supply, the Australian High Comm came into the picture.

Sometime ago, Lynne Saunders, a high-ranking staff at the High Comm, brought up Tembari’s food supply concerns to his boss -- High Commissioner Ian Kemish, AM -- who did not waste time to help Tembari.

In early July, Ms Saunders facilitated the delivery of the first 100 bags (10kg) of rice from Truikai Industries, which were good for at least 66 days (two months and 6 days), based on Tembari’s current rice consumption.

The truth is, the last five bags from the first delivery were consumed middle of last week.

The first 100 bags worth more than K3,500 were part of the 3.5 tons (350 bags) that the Australian High Comm had pledge to deliver.

The next deliveries are now being processed.

The delivery has to be done on staggered/installment basis as we don’t have proper and safe storage space for such a big volume of foodstuff. This is also the reason why the 100 bags of flour which the Aust High Comm has pledged couldn’t be brough to the center.

We really need a safe food storage space, one that the village thieves couldn’t breach.

One night last year, the baddies tried to break into our food storage facility and almost got away with our stocks.

Maybe one of you out there has a spare 10-foot container van which you could donate to Tembari for its food storage.

It would also provide storage space for materials like cooking wares, dining utensils and other kitchen materials.

Tembari urgently needs a safe place with which to store its foodstuff and a container van, which could easily be secured with lock and is strong enough to foil any attempts of break-in, is just the ideal facility for this.

Dear readers, if you think you can help us on this one, please don’t hesitate to call me on my cell phone 72231984.

In closing, I would like to thank the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby for finding merit in the services that Tembari provides to the village’s abandoned, unfortunate and orphan children.

This one goes also to RDTC, Hugo Canning, SVS mart, Pacific Industries and to our anonymous supporters and to individuals who, on occasion, would drop by at my workplace at The National newspaper to turn over foodstuff and materials for our children.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

A new platform for a water tank facility (pictured) has just been completed, which will be the base of a fourth water tank (5,000-liters) to be installed at Tembari premises. The supplier will deliver the new tank as soon as new stocks arrived. Shown in the background are the RH Foundation-donated water tank and the two units from Boroko Rotary Club.

THE BLOGGER

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ, A Friend of Tembari Children. Blogger APH came to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1993 to join The National newspaper as one of its pioneering journalists. Working as Executive Sub Editor, he has remained with the daily, now the country’s No. 1 newspaper, up to these days. He has been a journalist since his university days in Manila back in the late 60s. APH’s involvement with the Tembari children began in January 2010 after he discovered them at a Christmas party for the city’s 500 unfortunate children held at the Botanical Garden in Port Moresby. That day, he was chasing a story for The National, which happened to be that of the unfortunate children in the city. His self-appointed job for Tembari children composed of orphaned, abandoned, neglected and unfortunate children is to look for people and groups who could provide them food, money, health services and facilities necessary to create positive changes in their lives. This job is difficult, but what the heck …!

(Our sponsored Saturday lunch for the 200 Tembari kids costs only K250.00 per sponsor (we usually have two), which covers a special meat (fish or chicken) dish, veggies, steamed rice and cordial drink. The Saturday lunch needs at least two sponsors. Some had given more, allowing us to give the kids a generous heap of the day’s lunch. A rare bonus to the sponsors, along with the bricks they earn each time, is that I personally cook the dish, giving it a personal touch. And as they earn a brick, each of our benefactors also earn a passage into the heart of the Tembari kids, which is also a prepaid ticket to Heaven.)